<ul class="summary-list"><li><keyword id="6478840" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Dissociative-identity-disorder">Dissociative identity disorder</keyword>, formerly known as multiple personality disorder, is a psychiatric disorder in which a person has distinct identities or personality states, called "alters."</li><li>A <keyword id="10879" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="YouTube">YouTube</keyword> community centered on the disorder was thriving just a few months ago, with creators making educational videos about living with DID.</li><li>DID began trending on YouTube when Anthony Padilla, a popular interviewer, made a video featuring a creator with DID. Then a controversial YouTuber, <keyword id="8299810" type="AGENCY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Trisha-paytas">Trisha Paytas</keyword>, made waves when she said she had multiple personalities.</li><li>The attention put a spotlight on the community — but it also brought criticism that sowed discord among DID creators on YouTube.</li></ul><p>On YouTube, makeup challenges are common. But this one didn't go according to plan.</p><p>A YouTuber who goes by TeamPiñata applied dark eyeshadow all over their partner's face. <keyword id="9097265" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="dissociadid">DissociaDID</keyword>, also a YouTuber, looked like a panda with blackened eyes thanks to their haphazard techniques.</p><p>But the bad makeup application wasn't what was out of the ordinary. DissociaDID glazed over halfway through the video. The YouTuber suddenly took on masculine mannerisms and stiffened up.</p><p>"I didn't sign up for this," DissociaDID said with an Essex accent that wasn't present before. "Nin, where did you go?"</p><p>Without context, the scene would seem bizarre. But for Chloe Wilkinson, the legal name of the creator of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6kFD5xIFvWyLlytv5pTR1w" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the DissociaDID channel</a>, the sudden shift in personality is the norm. They have dissociative identity disorder, previously known as multiple personality disorder.</p><h2>DissociaDID quickly became a prominent YouTuber in the DID community</h2><p><a href="http://psychiatryonline.org/doi/abs/10.1176/appi.books.9781585625048.gg24" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders</a> describes dissociative identity disorder, or DID, as a psychiatric disorder in which a person shows at least two individual identities or personality states — known as "alters" — that can manifest through the person's behavior.</p><p>Wilkinson was diagnosed with DID after taking a leave from university. In 2018, at 21 years old, they launched their channel to educate their close friends about the condition.</p><p>Wilkinson's early videos tackled frequently asked questions about DID: What are alters? How do alters communicate and come to the surface? Is there a treatment for DID?</p><p>As the channel gained traction and subscribers, Wilkinson's content evolved. Subscribers wanted to meet the different alters in the "system" (a term DID creators have used to describe a collection of alters) and hear Wilkinson's reaction to negative portrayals of DID in the media. Some even requested makeup tutorials from the various alters.</p><p>Wilkinson delivered, posting videos that showed switches between alters and illustrated the inner world in which the alters operated.</p><p>As Wilkinson captured in the makeup tutorial, alters may emerge unexpectedly after being triggered. Triggers can be positive, such as a stuffed toy that brings out a juvenile alter, or negative, such as a reminder of past trauma.</p><p>"Oh my God, please, just give me 10 minutes. Just let me film," Wilkinson said in one video as they dissociated and other alters emerged.</p><p>While Wilkinson often used the pronoun of the alter that was speaking while filming, they frequently used "they" and "them" to refer to the group of alters, also known as a system.</p><p>The decision to share their life on YouTube took Wilkinson on a journey they couldn't have anticipated, gaining DissociaDID a massive following and propelling them into the world of A-list YouTube drama that would eventually fracture a thriving community.</p><h2>Experts say DID is a trauma disorder developed in childhood to protect the brain from harm and abuse</h2><p>Experts believe DID is the result of a personality fragmenting as a means of self-protection, cutting off memories and trauma from some parts of the self to make life more manageable. Wilkinson frequently addressed the believed causes of DID in videos, often alluding to experiencing severe trauma in childhood.</p><p><a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/experts/robert-t-muller-phd">Robert T. Muller</a>, a professor of clinical psychology at York University in Toronto who has over 20 years of experience working with people with DID, told Insider that the condition is usually, if not always, "a reaction to horrific, traumatic events that have happened early in childhood."</p><p>Good research on DID is relatively new, he added, which makes people with the disorder easy targets of skepticism — even among medical professionals. Misinformation about the disorder that's circulated online and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/living-with-split-personality-disorder-2017-2" target="_blank" rel="noopener">furthered in media portrayals</a> isn't helped by some in the psychiatric community making light of it, he said.</p><div type="image" title="Nin DissociaDID" height="775" width="1033" msid="78862563" hostid="261"></div><p>As Wilkinson said in several videos, speaking about the disorder invited rampant speculation and skepticism from viewers. Their diagnosis and the existence of DID at all were questioned constantly — and most fiercely — on Kiwi Farms, a forum where online figures are investigated and vilified, almost to an obsessive degree.</p><p>"It's a very scary thing, it's a very odd thing, so people doubt its reality," Muller said. "So I'm not surprised to hear that there are people online who have been sidelined, viewed as faking it, viewed as liars."</p><p>He said people felt the same way about post-traumatic stress disorder before the psychiatric field had a term for it. DID and PTSD are trauma-based disorders — "a response to overwhelming true events that occurred," Muller said.</p><p>The drama inherent in the idea of DID "makes it an interesting subject of fantasy and fiction and fictionalization, and it's very amenable to metaphor," he added. "Sometimes some of the misconceptions are that these people are very dramatic and it's a way in which they show off their different identities. Usually, this is really not the case."</p><p>There is <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/expert.q.a/02/23/dissociative.identity.disorder.raison/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">some debate among psychiatrists</a> about whether DID is a combination of several other disorders or something different. Muller said this is largely because of poor communication of the research and because reliable research is still in its infancy.</p><p>"We're still relatively new in getting that message out there," he said. "So I think that's part of the reason that there's so much confusion."</p><p>People with DID often live difficult lives and can struggle in relationships because of fears of abandonment, Muller said. Accusations of lying about their diagnosis or chastisement for their behavior can have severe effects on their well-being.</p><p>"If there are trolls on the internet who are going around saying you're lying, you're faking, that would feel absolutely humiliating and shaming," he said. "That could have a very strong impact on them in terms of thinking about suicide or feeling that they're unwanted in the world."</p><h2>Wilkinson said their channel was designed to destigmatize DID and bring a personal perspective to the online discourse</h2><p>In under two years, the DissociaDID channel surpassed 1 million subscribers. Beyond educating people about the disorder, YouTube fame facilitated community-building with other people with DID, Wilkinson said.</p><p>"When I started my channel, I really did feel like the only person in the world with this disorder," they told Insider in an interview. "When DissociaDID kind of reached new levels of [visibility], it was the most affirming thing to be able to build a community not just for our system but for others who felt like they were alone."</p><p>Finding a balance between shedding light on the disorder and maintaining privacy, however, proved difficult.</p><p>Wilkinson reached a new level of internet fame when <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPJHQ5_DLtxZ1gzBvZE99_g" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Anthony Padilla</a>, a YouTube creator with 4.8 million subscribers, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ek7JK6pattE" target="_blank" rel="noopener">interviewed them</a> for his "I Spent a Day With" series. The interview, published on March 4, covered the basics of DID and showed Wilkinson switching personalities three times.</p><p>The segment caught the attention of another YouTuber, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/blndsundoll4mj" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Trisha Paytas</a>, who has nearly 5 million subscribers and has confessed to trolling in the past. On March 12, she posted a video, which has racked up 1.7 million views, in which <a href="https://www.insider.com/trisha-paytas-claims-to-have-dissociative-identity-disorder-in-video-2020-3">she said she had multiple personalities</a>. She mentioned DissociaDID and said the YouTuber "seemed crazy."</p><p>Paytas' videos were met with intense skepticism from the DID community, which has struggled to legitimize treatment of the disorder. Critics said Paytas' attempt to excuse past bad behavior by blaming it on another personality was harmful, perpetuating a "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" stereotype about DID.</p><p>Wilkinson posted two responses to Paytas. In one, titled "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jiepCPbIf8">TRISHA PAYTAS – THE IMPACT</a>," Wilkinson detailed the effects of Paytas' comments on the DID community.</p><p>"We've seen a lot of other systems splitting, new alters being created, people saying that, you know, they ain't ever going to tell anyone else about their DID because of stuff like this," Wilkinson said in the video, adding that "it's been very damaging for the whole community, and that's been very difficult to watch."</p><h2>The new visibility posed challenges for DissociaDID and their partner, resulting in them fleeing the internet</h2><p>DissociaDID and TeamPiñata, who met via YouTube and began a long-distance relationship in late 2018, were arguably the two most popular DID YouTubers. Their channels steadily gained subscribers over the past year — TeamPiñata to 100,000 and DissociaDID to over 1 million. Their subscribers celebrated when they got engaged last year.</p><p>But the attention from Padilla's interview and Paytas' involvement in the online discourse spurred louder allegations from commentators that they were faking the disorder and manipulating followers, as well as concerns over old disturbing artwork.</p><p>A YouTuber named <a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/VangelinaSkov/videos" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Vangelina Skov</a> covered everything that unfolded in the DID community on their channel, bringing in thousands of subscribers.</p><p>Early on, Skov said, the couple was accused of cultural appropriation because they said they had alters of different races. In several videos, DissociaDID described one alter, Nadia, as Black and said her heritage involved "Native American influences."</p><p>As one DID creator of color explained in an Instagram post, this framing can have harmful implications. "Alters do not know what it's like to be a separate race or ethnicity than the body because they are all treated based on how the body looks," they wrote.</p><p>Wilkinson addressed the issue in a YouTube video and apologized with a statement on Instagram, saying that a literary character might have had an influence on the alter.</p><p>"Due to a life of white privilege our brain cannot comprehend the lived experiences of generational racial trauma, racial oppression, heritage and <keyword id="24504" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="100" keywordseo="culture">culture</keyword> that are involved," Wilkinson wrote.</p><p>Wilkinson did not disavow the alter, though.</p><p>Criticism of the couple intensified over a darker situation that surrounded TeamPiñata, whose legal name is Nanette Zúñiga.</p><p>Zúñiga came under scrutiny for artwork — which was posted on their old Tumblr account and resurfaced on <a href="https://www.instagram.com/d.i.d.you.want.the.facts/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Instagram</a> — in which they described their "sneeze fetish" in detail, with NSFW cartoons depicting clearly juvenile characters, such as the Powerpuff Girls, in sexual situations.</p><p>Zúñiga defended the drawings in a livestream but subsequently deleted their YouTube channel and disappeared from social media.</p><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTI5BlmP3K30MHh0Bxnp92A" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Alternative System</a>, another DID YouTuber, said the discovery of this art and the reactions of Zúñiga and their fans was traumatizing to some people in the DID community, many of whom are survivors of childhood sexual abuse.</p><p>"The impact of the behavior of these two systems caused an uproar in the community," they told Insider. "A lot of us had great emotional distress. A lot of us had a lot of hate thrown our way and even death threats for speaking out against these systems."</p><h2>For people with DID, aspects of the disorder can lead to feelings of shame and regret</h2><p>Muller said that people with DID lack the ability to have full control over the different parts of themselves. Most people can put on different "hats" — be it the colleague, the boss, the parent, or the lover — but having DID means this ability is "severely compromised," with different alters speaking, interacting, and behaving on their own whims, he said.</p><p>They can do and say things that later on they may have no memory of, which can lead to shame, embarrassment, and fear of the repercussions, he said. They blame themselves for not having the control to stop themselves, he said.</p><p>Muller said he didn't know Zúñiga's case. But he said that people with DID are no more dangerous than other people, adding that when people with DID share artwork, it's part of themselves, and it is usually accompanied by feelings of vulnerability.</p><div type="image" title="DissociaDID TeamPinata" height="781" width="1042" msid="78862564" hostid="261"></div><p>Wilkinson <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Lj45V1ec5E&amp;ab_channel=BoredMonroenroe" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said on Instagram</a> shortly after Zúñiga's pictures were discovered that they had no idea the images existed and that they needed to take some time off YouTube. They said they attempted suicide during the break and were working on their <keyword id="6354774" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="Mental-health">mental health</keyword>. They have since said they are no longer in a relationship with Zúñiga.</p><h2>The DID community is healing after the disruption</h2><p>Zúñiga <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPTPPddfIp0&amp;ab_channel=VangelinaSkovSkov">expressed sadness</a> about the DID community being torn apart when they left YouTube.</p><p>But Skov told Insider the community was not necessarily damaged, because not everyone accepted the couple in the first place. The Alternative System, for example, accused DissociaDID and TeamPiñata of presenting a sensationalized, dramatic depiction of DID.</p><p>Without the couple, Skov said, the small DID community that predated them on YouTube can continue their videos without the fear of drama.</p><p>"After the Anthony Padilla video, there were a lot of new eyes on the community that hadn't been there before, so for a while it seemed bigger than it was," Skov told Insider. "But after everything's sort of died down and Trisha Paytas went away, the community kind of went back to normal."</p><p>There was a lot of fighting and tension for a while, Skov said, but now it seems to be back to what it was: a small pocket of the internet for people with DID to communicate, spread awareness, and feel safe.</p><p>Wilkinson declined to comment on the shifts within the DID community, citing a need to focus on their mental <keyword id="6354750" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="health">health</keyword> and safety during a break from social media. DissociaDID has since posted a few times <a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/DissociaDID/community" target="_blank" rel="noopener">on their community tab</a> and set up a drawing competition for fans, but they have mostly remained offline.</p><p>They <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLW1Acynvb4&amp;t=77s&amp;ab_channel=DissociaDIDsociaDID" target="_blank" rel="noopener">posted their first video</a> in months on Tuesday to promote their Patreon. They said that while they missed their fans, they weren't ready to return to YouTube just yet.</p><p>"We've been thinking of you this whole time, but it's been a journey. It's been a time," they said. "We've been having a time. We genuinely have missed you all so much."</p><p>They said they had "a little bit further to go" in their healing before they could start making educational videos again, but they hinted that it would happen soon.</p><p>"We're still here, don't worry," they said confidently. "We will be making videos again."</p><p><strong>Read more:</strong></p><p><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/living-with-split-personality-disorder-2017-2">Dissociative identity disorder is nothing like how it's portrayed in 'Split,' according to people who have it</a></p><p><a href="https://www.insider.com/trisha-paytas-youtube-feud-did-dissociative-identity-disorder-2020-3">Trisha Paytas is embroiled in an escalating YouTube feud over her videos claiming that she has multiple personalities</a></p><p><a href="https://www.insider.com/everything-trisha-paytas-got-wrong-about-dissociative-identity-disorder-2020-3">Everything Trisha Paytas got wrong about dissociative identity disorder in a video where she claimed to have multiple personalities</a></p>

A thriving YouTube community of people with multiple personality states went viral. Then controversies fractured it down the middle.

Pro acting coach breaks down 12 Batman villain performances

Ex-CIA Intelligence officer rates 11 CIA spy scenes in movies and TV

<p><div class="image-container" style="width:800px"><div class="image"><p class="source">REUTERS/Mike Blake</p></div></div>NEW YORK (<keyword id="76338" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Reuters">Reuters</keyword>) - Two security experts said they have figured out how to spy on <keyword id="6393116" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Verizon">Verizon</keyword> Wireless mobile phone customers by hacking into devices the U.S. carrier sells to boost wireless signals indoors.</p>
<p>The finding, which the experts demonstrated to Reuters and will further detail at two hacking conferences this summer, comes at a time of intense global debate about electronic privacy, after top-secret U.S. <keyword id="6354565" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="surveillance">surveillance</keyword> programs were leaked by a former <a>National Security Agency</a> contractor, Edward Snowden, last month.</p>
<p>"This is not about how the NSA would attack ordinary people. This is about how ordinary people would attack ordinary people," said <a>Tom Ritter</a>, a senior consultant with the security firm <a>iSEC Partners</a>.</p>
<p>Verizon said it has updated the software on its signal-boosting devices, known as femtocells or network extenders, to prevent hackers from copying the technique of the two experts.</p>
<p>But Ritter said motivated hackers can still find other ways to hack the femtocells of Verizon, as well as those offered by some 30 carriers worldwide to their customers.</p>
<p>Femtocells, which act as tiny cellphone towers, can be purchased directly from Verizon for $250. Used models can be obtained online for about $150.</p>
<p>Ritter and his colleague, <a>Doug DePerry</a>, demonstrated for Reuters how they can eavesdrop on text messages, photos and phone calls made with an <a>Android</a> phone and an <a>iPhone</a> by using a Verizon femtocell that they had previously hacked.</p>
<p>They declined to disclose how they had modified the software on the device, saying they do not want to make it any easier for criminals to figure out similar ways to hack femtocells.</p>
<p>The two said they plan to give more elaborate demonstrations two weeks from now at the <a>Black Hat</a> and Def Con hacking conferences in <a>Las Vegas</a>. More than 15,000 security professionals and hackers are expected to attend those conferences, which feature talks on newly found bugs in communications systems, smart TVs, <a>mobile devices</a> and computers that run facilities from factories to oil rigs.</p>
<p>Verizon Wireless released a <a>Linux</a> software update in March that prevents its network extenders from being compromised in the manner reported by Ritter and DePerry, according to company spokesman <a>David Samberg</a>.</p>
<p>"The Verizon Wireless Network Extender remains a very secure and effective solution for our customers," Samberg said in a statement. He said there have been no reports of customers being impacted by the bug that the researchers had identified. The company is a joint venture between Verizon Communications Inc and <a>Vodafone Group Plc.</a></p>
<p>Samberg said his company uses an internal security team as well as outside firms to look for vulnerabilities in the devices it sells, before and after they are released.</p>
<p>Still, the two researchers said they are able to use the hacked femtocell to spy on Verizon phones even after Verizon released that update because they had modified the device before the company pushed out the software fix.</p>
<p>The researchers built their "proof of concept" system that they will demonstrate in <a>Las Vegas</a> with femtocells manufactured by Samsung Electronics Co and a $50 antenna from <a>Wilson Electronics Inc.</a></p>
<p>They said that with a little more work, they could have weaponized it for stealth attacks by packaging all equipment needed for a surveillance operation into a backpack that could be dropped near a target they wanted to monitor.</p>
<p>For example, a group interested in potential mergers might place such a backpack in Manhattan restaurants frequented by investment bankers. Verizon's website said the device has a 40-foot range, but the researchers believe that could be expanded by adding specialized antennas.</p>
<p>The iSEC researchers are not the first to warn of vulnerabilities in femtocells, but claim to be the first to hack the femtocells of a U.S. carrier and also the first running on a wireless standard known as CDMA.</p>
<p>Other hacking experts have previously uncovered security bugs in femtocells used by carriers in <a>Europe</a>.</p>
<p><a>CTIA</a>, a wireless industry group based in Washington, in February released a report that identified femtocells as a potential point of attack.</p>
<p><a>John Marinho</a>, <a>CTIA</a>'s vice president for cyber security and Technology, said that the group is more concerned about other potential cyber threats, such as malicious apps. He is not aware of any case where attacks were launched via femtocells.</p>
<p>Still, he said, the industry is monitoring the issue: "Threats change every day."</p>
<p>(Reporting by Jim Finkle; Editing by Richard Valdmanis, Tiffany Wu and Phil Berlowitz)</p>

Researchers Hack Verizon Device, Turn It Into Mobile Spy Station For Less Than $300

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>Larry Charles, a key staff writer on 'Seinfeld' and the director of 'Borat' and 'Religulous,' sat down with comedian/podcaster Pete Holmes for <a href="http://www.nerdist.com/pepisode/you-made-it-weird-234-larry-charles/">this week's episode</a> of his "<a href="http://www.nerdist.com/podcast_channel/you-made-it-weird-channel/">You Made It Weird</a>" podcast.</p>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">The best moment from the episode comes about 1 hour and 26 minutes in when Charles offers up a story about working with Bob Dylan.</span></p>
<p>He mentions that back in the 90s, Bob Dylan was endlessly touring and stuck on a bus a lot of the time, so to combat his boredom, he would become "addicted" to different genres of movies and watch "every single one of them" during that period.</p>
<p>At one point, he became "deeply into Jerry Lewis" and decided he wanted to star in a slapstick comedy. Not only that, but he decides he wants to do it as a TV series for HBO, and this is when Charles' phone starts to ring.</p>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Charles describes the whole experience as "very dreamlike" and says he really only took the meeting so he could tell his friends he had a meeting with Bob Dylan. Charles describes the surreal meeting:</span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">"He owns a boxing gym in Santa Monica, I meet him in the back of this boxing gym in a cubicle, he's chain-smoking the whole time...completely smoke-filled...and his assistant comes over and says 'do you want something to drink' and it's attached to this coffee house so I say 'yeah, I'll just have an iced coffee' and Bob responds 'I want something hot. I want a hot beverage,' because that's sort of how he talks, he talks in this very ornate way. So they bring a hot coffee for him, a cappuccino or something, and they bring an iced coffee for me and they put them together in the middle of the table and he immediately grabs my iced coffee and starts drinking the iced coffee. </span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">"And I'm watching him drink it, and I'm not touching the other thing I didn't want the other thing, and finally he almost finishes my drink and goes 'why aren't you drinking your drink' and it's like 'you're drinking my drink,' y'know, and he kinda laughed, and that kinda broke the ice, strangely enough. It's like going to see a sorcerer...'cause it's like all a test...he drank my drink, how would I react?"</span><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"><br /></strong></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div></span></p>
<p>As the meeting progressed, Charles got some fascinating and unique insight into Bob Dylan's writing process.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">"He brings out this very ornate beautiful box, like a sorcerer would, and he opens the box and dumps all these pieces of scrap paper on the table...and yes, that is exactly what he does...every piece of scrap paper was a hotel stationary, little scraps from Norway and from Belgium and Brazil and places like that, and each little piece of paper had a line, like some kind of little line scribbled or a name scribbled, 'Uncle Sweetheart,' or a weird poetic line or an idea or whatever, and he was like 'I don't know what to do with all this,'...and for some reason I was able to go 'oh y'know you can take this...this is a line, this is the character, and the character could say this line.' And he said 'you can do that?' and it's like 'yeah, yeah you can do that' because I realized that's how he writes songs, he takes these scraps and he puts them together and makes his poetry out of that. </span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">"He has all these ideas...and then just in a kind of subconscious or unconscious way he lets them kind of synthesize into a coherent thing, and that's how we wound up writing, also. We wound up writing in a very cut-up technique, we would just take scraps of paper, put them together, try to make them make sense, try to find the story points within it, and we finally...we wrote this very elaborate treatment for this slapstick comedy which was filled with surrealism and all kinds of things from his songs and stuff. </span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">So we say to Bob, 'if you come to HBO with us, we'll definitely sell the project because they won't have the balls to say no to your face,' and he agrees."</span></p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">"So he showed up at the meeting...and at the time, by the way, I was only wearing pajamas everywhere I went, I used to just wear pajamas, I worked at 'Mad About You' for two years, I started wearing pajamas, everywhere I went,  I would take my kids to events and I'd be wearing pajamas...I probably was having a nervous breakdown and didn't realize, but I wore pajamas everywhere I went."</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">"So I show up for the meeting in my pajamas...and he shows for the meeting at HBO in a black cowboy hat, a black floor length duster, black boots, he looks like Cat Ballou or something, he looks like a Western guy who's carrying six guns. </span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">"We stride down the hall at HBO, if you can imagine that scene, my hair is super long, beard down to my belly button in f*ckin' pajamas and Bob Dylan is dressed like a cowboy from a movie. We go into the meeting and Chris Albrecht who was the president of HBO says 'Bob, oh,  so great to meet you, look I have the original tickets from Woodstock' and Bob goes 'I didn't play Woodstock' and then he walks over to the other side of the office which has floor to ceiling windows overlooking the city and proceeds to have his back turned to us for the entire meeting. </span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">"He never turns around, I have to start pitching this thing...this is who he is. Gavin Polone was there, who has my manager at the time, and he was like [whisper] 'he's like a retarded child.' So I would go 'Bob's going to do this, right Bob?'</span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"> and at the end, ironically, despite all this discomfort, they bought the project, indeed. </span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">"They bought the project, we go out to the elevator, Bob's manager Jeff, my manager Gavin, me and Bob, the 3 of us are elated we actually sold the project and Bob says 'I don't want to do it anymore.' He says 'I don't want to do it anymore, it's too slapsticky.' He's like not into it, that's over. The slapstick phase has officially ended. He's not into it anymore, and Gavin Polone said to me 'you gotta get out of this', and I said 'I'm on the Bob Dylan train, I'm going to take this train wherever it takes me' and we wound up re-writing that into kinda like a serious movie, and that's what we wound up shooting, which took another year to do that.' </span></p>
<p>The final product, titled "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Masked-Anonymous-Bob-Dylan/dp/B00000F2L9">Masked and Anonymous</a>," debuted at Sundance Film Festival in 2003 and received <a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/masked_and_anonymous/">less than stellar reviews</a> despite an impressive cast (pictured below).</p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table click-to-enlarge"><div><div class="image on-image"><a title_source="IMDb" title_caption="" class="zoomin" href="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/545e913069bedd686ab4df46-960/unnamed-85.png"><span class="sprites click-to-enlarge-icon" title="Click to enlarge"></span></a><p class="source"><span>IMDb</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p>
<p><span>The episode of "You Made It Weird" was a quintessential example of what makes the longform, intimate interview podcast so special - Pete's an incredible conversationalist, and Larry Charles was an open book, telling numerous great stories from his lengthy (and still thriving) career. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Below is a YouTube clip with an abridged version of the story. The full episode is available for free <a href="http://www.nerdist.com/pepisode/you-made-it-weird-234-larry-charles/">here</a>.<br /></span></p>
<p></p>

The Wonderfully Bizarre Story Of Bob Dylan Wanting To Make An HBO Slapstick Comedy With A Seinfeld Writer

<p><em><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><a href="http://www.clevcode.org/cicada-3301/">3301</a></p></div><p></p></div></div>For the past two years, a mysterious online organisation has been setting the world's finest code-breakers a series of seemingly unsolveable problems. But to what end? Welcome to the world of Cicada 3301</em></p>
<p>One evening in January last year, Joel Eriksson, a 34-year-old computer analyst from Uppsala in Sweden, was trawling the web, looking for distraction, when he came across a message on an internet forum. The message was in stark white type, against a black background.</p>
<p>"Hello," it said. "We are looking for highly intelligent individuals. To find them, we have devised a test. There is a message hidden in this image. Find it, and it will lead you on the road to finding us. We look forward to meeting the few that will make it all the way through. Good luck."</p>
<p>The message was signed: "3301".</p>
<p>A self-confessed IT security "freak" and a skilled cryptographer, Eriksson's interest was immediately piqued. This was - he knew - an example of digital steganography: the concealment of secret information within a digital file. Most often seen in conjunction with image files, a recipient who can work out the code - for example, to alter the colour of every 100th pixel - can retrieve an entirely different image from the randomised background "noise".</p>
<p>It's a technique more commonly associated with nefarious ends, such as concealing child pornography. In 2002 it was suggested that al-Qaeda operatives had planned the September 11 attacks via the auction site eBay, <em><a href="http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/2001-02-05-binladen.htm">by encrypting messages inside digital photographs</a></em> .</p>
<p>Sleepily - it was late, and he had work in the morning - Eriksson thought he'd try his luck decoding the message from "3301". After only a few minutes work he'd got somewhere: a reference to "Tiberius Claudius Caesar" and a line of meaningless letters.</p>
<p>Joel deduced it might be an embedded "Caesar cipher" - an encryption technique named after Julius Caesar, who used it in private correspondence. It replaces characters by a letter a certain number of positions down the alphabet. As Claudius was the fourth emperor, it suggested "four" might be important - and lo, within minutes, Eriksson found another web address buried in the image's code.</p>
<p>Feeling satisfied, he clicked the link.</p>
<p>It was a picture of a duck with the message: "Woops! Just decoys this way. Looks like you can't guess how to get the message out."</p>
<p>"If something is too easy or too routine, I quickly lose interest," says Eriksson. "But it seemed like the challenge was a bit harder than a Caesar cipher after all. I was hooked."</p>
<p>Eriksson didn't realise it then, but he was embarking on one of the internet's most enduring puzzles; a scavenger hunt that has led thousands of competitors across the web, down telephone lines, out to several physical locations around the globe, and into unchartered areas of the "darknet".</p>
<p>So far, the hunt has required a knowledge of number theory, philosophy and classical music. An interest in both cyberpunk literature and the Victorian occult has also come in handy as has an understanding of Mayan numerology.</p>
<p>It has also featured a poem, a tuneless guitar ditty, a femme fatale called "Wind" who may, or may not, exist in real life, and a clue on a lamp post in Hawaii. Only one thing is certain: as it stands, no one is entirely sure what the challenge - known as Cicada 3301 - is all about or who is behind it.</p>
<p>D<span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">epending on who you listen to, it's either a mysterious secret society, a statement by a new political think tank, or an arcane recruitment drive by some quasi-military body. Which means, of course, everyone thinks it's the CIA.</span></p>
<p>For some, it's just a fun game, like a more complicated Sudoku; for others, it has become an obsession. Almost two years on, Eriksson is still trying to work out what it means for him. "It is, ultimately, a battle of the brains," he says. "And I have always had a hard time resisting a challenge."</p>
<p>On the night of January 5 2012, after reading the "decoy" message from the duck, Eriksson began to tinker with other variables.</p>
<p>Taking the duck's mockery as a literal clue, Eriksson decided to run it through a decryption program called OutGuess. Success: another hidden message, this time linking to another messageboard on the massively popular news forum <em><a href="http://www.reddit.com/">Reddit</a></em> .</p>
<p>H<span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">ere, encrypted lines from a book were being posted every few hours. But there were also strange symbols comprising of several lines and dots - Mayan numbers, Eriksson realised. And duly translated, they led to another cipher.</span></p>
<p>Up until now, Eriksson would admit, none of the puzzles had really required any advanced skills, or suggested anything other than a single anonymous riddle-poser having some fun. "But then it all changed," says Eriksson. "And things started getting interesting."</p>
<p>Suddenly, the encryption techniques jumped up a gear. And the puzzles themselves mutated in several different directions: hexadecimal characters, reverse-engineering, prime numbers. Pictures of the cicada insect - reminiscent of the moth imagery in Thomas Harris's The Silence of the Lambs - became a common motif.</p>
<p>"I knew cicadas only emerge every prime number of years - 13, or 17 - to avoid synchronising with the life cycles of their predators," says Eriksson. "It was all starting to fit together." The references became more arcane too. The book, for example, turned out to be "The Lady of the Fountain", a poem about King Arthur taken from <em><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mabinogion">The Mabinogion</a></em>, a collection of pre-Christian medieval Welsh manuscripts.</p>
<p>Later, the puzzle would lead him to the cyberpunk writer William Gibson - specifically his 1992 poem "Agrippa" (a book of the dead), infamous for the fact that it was only published on a 3.5in floppy disk, and <em><a href="http://agrippa.english.ucsb.edu/">was programmed to erase itself after being read once</a></em>.</p>
<p>But as word spread across the web, thousands of amateur codebreakers joined the hunt for clues. Armies of users of <em><a href="http://www.4chan.org/">4chan</a></em>, the anarchic internet forum where the first Cicada message is thought to have appeared, pooled their collective intelligence - and endless free time - to crack the puzzles.</p>
<p>Within hours they'd decoded "The Lady of the Fountain". The new message, however, was another surprise: "Call us," it read, "at telephone number 214-390-9608". By this point, only a few days after the original image was posted, Eriksson had taken time off work to join the pursuit full time.</p>
<p>"This was definitely an unexpected turn," he recalls. "And the first hint that this might not just be the work of a random internet troll." Although now disconnected, the phone line was based in Texas, and led to an answering machine. There, a robotic voice told them to find the prime numbers in the original image. By multiplying them together, the solvers found a new prime and a new website: 845145127.com. A countdown clock and a huge picture of a cicada confirmed they were on the right path.</p>
<p>"It was thrilling, breathtaking by now," says Eriksson. "This shared feeling of discovery was immense. But the plot was about to thicken even more." Once the countdown reached zero, at 5pm GMT on January 9, it showed 14 GPS coordinates around the world: locations in Warsaw, Paris, Seattle, Seoul, Arizona, California, New Orleans, Miami, Hawaii and Sydney. Sat in Sweden, Eriksson waited as, around the globe, amateur solvers left their apartments to investigate. And, one by one reported what they'd found: a poster, attached to a lamp post, bearing the cicada image and a QR code (the black-and-white bar code often seen on adverts these days and designed to take you to a website via your smartphone).</p>
<p>"It was exhilarating," said Eriksson. "I was suddenly aware of how much effort they must have been putting into creating this kind of challenge." For the growing Cicada community, it was explosive - proof this wasn't merely some clever neckbeard in a basement winding people up, but actually a global organisation of talented people. But who?</p>
<p>Speculation had been rife since the image first appeared. Some thought Cicada might merely be a PR stunt; a particularly labyrinthine Alternate Reality Game (ARG) built by a corporation to ultimately - and disappointingly - promote a new movie or car.</p>
<p>Microsoft, for example, had enjoyed huge success with their critically acclaimed "I Love Bees" ARG campaign. Designed to promote the Xbox game Halo 2 in 2004, it used random payphones worldwide to broadcast a War of the Worlds-style radio drama that players would have to solve.</p>
<p>But there were complicating factors to Cicada. For one, the organisers were actively working against the participants. One "solver", a female known only as Wind from Michigan, contributed to the quest on several messageboards before the community spotted she was deliberately disseminating false clues. Other interference was more pointed.</p>
<p>One long, cautionary diatribe, left anonymously on the website Pastebin, claimed to be from an ex-Cicada member - a non-English military officer recruited to the organisation "by a superior". Cicada, he said, "was a Left-Hand Path religion disguised as a progressive scientific organisation" - comprising of "military officers, diplomats, and academics who were dissatisfied with the direction of the world". Their plan, the writer claimed, was to transform humanity into the Nietzschen Übermensch.</p>
<p>"This is a dangerous organisation," he concluded, "their ways are nefarious." With no other clues, it was also asssumed by many to be a recruitment drive by the CIA, MI6 or America's National Security Agency (NSA), as part of a search for highly talented cryptologists. It wouldn't have been the first time such tactics had been used.</p>
<p>Back in 2010, for example, Air Force Cyber Command - the United States' hacking defence force, based at Fort Meade in Maryland - secretly embedded a complex hexadecimal code in their new logo. Cybercom head Lt Gen Keith Alexander then challenged the world's amateur analysts to crack it ( <em><a href="http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9179004/Researcher_cracks_secret_code_in_U.S._Cyber_Command_logo">it took them three hours</a></em> ). And in September this year, <em><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/10301435/Can-you-crack-the-code-GCHQ-unveils-fiendish-puzzle-for-new-recruits.html">GCHQ launched the "Can You Find It?" initiative</a></em> - a series of cryptic codes designed to root out the best British cryptographers. As GCHQ's head of resourcing Jane Jones said at the time, "It's a puzzle but it's also a serious test - the jobs on offer here are vital to protecting national security."</p>
<p>Dr Jim Gillogly, former president of the American Cryptogram Association, has been cracking similar codes for years and says it's a tried and tested recruitment tactic.</p>
<p>"During the Second World War, the top-secret Government Code and Cypher School used crossword puzzles printed in The Daily Telegraph to identify good candidates for Bletchley Park," he says. "But I'm not sure the CIA or NSA is behind Cicada. Both are careful with security, the recent Snowden case notwithstanding. And starting the puzzle on [the anarchic internet forum] 4chan might attract people with less respect for authority than they would want working inside."</p>
<p>But that doesn't rule out other organisations. "Computer and data security is more important than ever today," says Dr Gillogly. The proliferation of wireless devices, mobile telephones, e-commerce websites like Amazon and chip-and-pin machines, means the demand for cryptologists has never been higher. (Something the UK government acknowledged last year when it announced it was setting up <em><a href="http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/research/centres/Pages/acecybersecurity.aspx">11 academic "centres of excellence" in cyber security research</a></em> .)</p>
<p>"One of the more important components of security systems is the efficacy of the cryptography being used," says Dr Gillogly. "Which means cryptanalysts are in higher demand than ever before - no longer just with the intelligence services. It could just as easily be a bank or software company [behind Cicada]."</p>
<p>Eriksson himself agrees. As a regular speaker at Black Hat Briefings - the secretive computer security conferences where government agencies and corporations get advice from hackers - he knows certain organisations occasionally go "fishing" for new recruits like this. But to him the signs point to a recruitment drive by a hacker group like Anonymous.</p>
<p>"I can't help but notice," he says, "that the locations in question are all places with some of the most talented hackers and IT security researchers in the world." Either way, their identity would prove irrelevant. When the QR codes left on the lamp posts were decoded, a hidden message pointed the solvers towards a TOR address.</p>
<p>TOR, short for The Onion Router, is an obscure routing network that allows anonymous access to the "darknet" - the vast, murky portion of the internet that cannot be indexed by standard search engines. <em><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/10456108/David-Cameron-wins-FBI-support-for-dark-web-war-on-paedophiles.html">Estimated to be 5,000 times larger that the "surface" web</a>,</em> it's in these recesses where you'll find human-trafficking rings, black market drug markets and terrorist networks. And it's here where the Cicada path ended.</p>
<p>After a designated number of solvers visited the address, the website shut down with a terse message: "We want the best, not the followers." The chosen few received personal emails - detailing what, none have said, although one solver heard they were now being asked to solve puzzles in private. Eriksson, however, was not among them. "It was my biggest anticlimax - when I was too late to register my email at the TOR hidden service," he says. "If my sleep-wake cycle had been different, I believe I would have been among the first." Regardless, a few weeks later, a new message from Cicada was posted on Reddit. It read: "Hello. We have now found the individuals we sought. Thus our month-long journey ends. For now." All too abruptly for thousands of intrigued solvers, it had gone quiet.</p>
<p>Except no. On January 4 this year, something new. A fresh image, with a new message in the same white text: "Hello again. Our search for intelligent individuals now continues." Analysis of the image would reveal another poem - this time from the book <em><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_the_Law">Liber Al Vel Legis</a></em>, a religious doctrine by the English occultist and magician Aleister Crowley. From there, the solvers downloaded a 130Mb file containing thousands of prime numbers. And also an MP3 file: a song called The Instar Emergence by the artist 3301, which begins with the sound of - guess what - cicadas.</p>
<p>Analysis of that has since lead to a Twitter account pumping out random numbers, which in turn produced a "gematria": an ancient Hebrew code table, but this time based on Anglo-Saxon runes. This pointed the solvers back into the darknet, where they found seven new physical locations, from Dallas to Moscow to Okinawa, and more clues.</p>
<p>But that's where, once again, the trail has gone cold. Another select group of "first solvers" have been accepted into a new "private" puzzle - this time, say reports, a kind of Myers-Briggs multiple-choice personality test.</p>
<p>But still, we are no closer to knowing the source, or fundamental purpose, of Cicada 3301. "That's the beauty of it though," says Eriksson. "It is impossible to know for sure until you have solved it all." That is why for him, and thousands of other hooked enthusiasts, January 4 2014 is so important: that's when the next set of riddles is due to begin again. "Maybe all will be revealed then," he grins. "But somehow, I doubt it."</p>
<p></p>

This Cryptic Internet Scavenger Hunt Has Baffled Cyber Experts For Two Years

<p>"Disco Night Sept 11," an upcoming photography book from <a href="http://www.petervanagtmael.net/">Peter van Agtmael</a>, documents how the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have affected U.S. citizens and soldiers.</p>
<p>Agtmael covered the consequences of America's wars, both at home and abroad, from 2006 to 2013. During that time he strove to re-inject the realities of the wars into America's national consciousness. His photographs provide a very human perspective to a series of wars that are often lacking a human face in the media.</p>
<p>"Disco Night Sept 11" is due to be released on April 16; advanced copies can be ordered through the Red Hook Editions <a href="redhookeditions.com">website</a>.</p>
<h2>A Marine catches his breath after a firefight with the Taliban.</h2>
<h3><div class="KonaFilter image-container"><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>Peter van Agtmael / Red Hook Editions</span></p><p class="caption">A Marine after a firefight with the Taliban.  MIAN POSHTEH, HELMAND. AFGHANISTAN. 2009.</p></div><p></p></div></h3>
<h2>Recruits practice Combat Life Saving techniques before their eventual deployment.</h2>
<h3><div class="KonaFilter image-container"><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>Peter van Agtmael / Red Hook Editions</span></p><p class="caption">A drill sergeant watches recruits performing Combat Life Saving techniques. Several soldiers mimic brutal injuries, screaming and writhing, a few faintly smirking. The recruits bandage the injured and get them out of the "kill zone" while others provide cover. A man in a black-billed hat films the action for later review. Their movements are slow and clumsy. The instructors shake their heads and grimace but say the exercise will run smoothly with more practice. Ultimately, most soldiers injured on the battlefield survive even the most grievous wounds.  FORT JACKSON, SOUTH CAROLINA. USA. 2011.</p></div><p></p></div></h3>
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<h2>A boy stares at the ground as U.S. soldiers perform a sweep through his house looking for contraband in Iraq.</h2>
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<h3><div class="KonaFilter image-container"><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>Peter van Agtmael / Red Hook Editions</span></p><p class="caption">American soldiers on a foot patrol noticed that two young men were eying them and fidgeting. Anticipating violence, they stormed their house. During the search the soldiers teased a young medic about his virginity. The soldiers had already searched hundreds of houses during their deployment, and the banter was casual as they swept the family's possessions onto the floor. In the next room other soldiers were questioning a boy. "Have there been any new faces around the house lately?" "Are your brothers coming and going at strange hours?" The boy muttered noncommittal answers and stared at the ground. They found no contraband in the house, but the hands of the young men came up with a faint residue of explosives. The lieutenant in charge of the platoon decided to detain them, though he thought they were innocent. The explosives tests were notoriously unreliable. They were blindfolded, and their hands bound with zip ties. The rest of the family began screaming, beating their chests and waving their arms. The soldiers locked them in a room and pushed the two stumbling men towards the Stryker.  MOSUL. IRAQ. 200</p></div><p></p></div></h3>
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<h2>U.S. soldiers shelter themselves as a Blackhawk helicopter lands nearby.</h2>
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<h3><div class="KonaFilter image-container"><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>Peter van Agtmael / Red Hook Editions</span></p><p class="caption">A U.S. Blackhawk helicopter lands at the Ranch House, a small American outpost deep in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan. There were no decent roads and all medevacs, re-supply and transport were done by helicopter.  Blackhawks were in short supply, and many of the helicopters were ancient, shuddering Russian models subcontracted by the U.S. military and known as "Jingle Air." Some of the pilots had served in the Russian Army during the previous war in Afghanistan. They were storied figures, celebrated for bravery under fire and rumors of heavy vodka consumption in flight. WAIGUL VALLEY, NURISTAN. AFGHANISTAN. 2007.</p></div><p></p></div></h3>
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<h2>A sergeant rests as his house performs a search in a home in Iraq.</h2>
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<h3><div class="KonaFilter image-container"><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>Peter van Agtmael / Red Hook Editions</span></p><p class="caption">Sergeant Jackson rests while his platoon searches the house of a suspected insurgent. They found nothing suspicious, and the commander assumed he had received bad intelligence. Most of the raids I witnessed were dry holes. Before leaving, the commanding officer would occasionally compensate for damage by pressing a wad of soiled dinars or dollars into wary hands. Usually the platoon would leave without an apology to continue searching for their target, or return to base before insurgents had the chance to organize and attack.  RAWAH. IRAQ. 2006</p></div><p></p></div></h3>
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<h2>A soldier, shaken, recounts his experience with a suicide bombing.</h2>
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<h3><div class="KonaFilter image-container"><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>Peter van Agtmael / Red Hook Editions</span></p><p class="caption">I was sleeping when I heard an explosion coming from the city of Mosul. I walked over to the motor pool as a column of Strykers rolled in. A few soldiers hurried past me, their faces tightly drawn. I joined the next patrol heading into town and was told there had been a suicide bombing. Nine people had been killed and twenty-three wounded in a crowded cafe´ during the breakfast hour. The vehicles stopped down the street from the blast site, and we walked to the gaping hole in the otherwise quiet block. The Abu-Ali restaurant was shattered. The soldiers had stopped by the restaurant many times for sugary tea or a chat with the friendly owner. Now bits of flesh and scorched food, splinters of furniture and crockery choked the floor. The streets were empty except for a few curious bystanders. The patrol moved to the hospital to check on the victims. Ali, the owner, lay shriveled on one of the beds. His head was swaddled in bandages but for his nose and lips, which were caked in dried blood. He did not survive the day.  MOSUL. IRAQ. 2006.</p></div><p></p></div></h3>
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<h2>A military widow picks up her son on the way to the viewing of her husband.</h2>
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<h3><div class="KonaFilter image-container"><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>Peter van Agtmael / Red Hook Editions</span></p><p class="caption">Rosie Ricketts picks up her son Aiden before the viewing of her husband Seth, killed the previous week in Afghanistan She has two young children, with a third on the way. In her father's home, Rosie remembered her life with Ricketts. They had met in church. She was the preacher's daughter; Seth was the wild one. The day before he left for basic training, they confessed their feelings for each other. When Seth came back, he asked her father for permission to date her. They married in 2005. After he'd come back from several difficult tours, they tried to have a conversation about what to do if he was killed. He told her, "I'm invincible. Nothing's going to happen to me." The temporary coffin carrying Ricketts arrived at Dover Air Force Base on March 2. Dover is the first stop for dead soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, and their families are often on hand to attend a brief, solemn ceremony as the flag-wrapped cases are removed from the plane and brought to the mortuary. The ban on media coverage of these transfers, in place during the Bush Administration, was lifted in February 2009 when Secretary of <keyword id="6354810" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="100" keywordseo="Defense">Defense</keyword> Robert Gates ruled it should be up to the families of the fallen to decide whether the press should be allowed to photograph the return of their loved ones. About half the families agree to permit media coverage. Although dozens of journalists attended the early transfers after the ban was lifted, interest quickly waned. GLEN, MISSISSIPPI. USA. 2010.</p></div><p></p></div></h3>
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<h2>A veteran plays with his sons after returning from war.</h2>
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<h3><div class="KonaFilter image-container"><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>Peter van Agtmael / Red Hook Editions</span></p><p class="caption">Raymond Hubbard with his children, Brady and Riley. Since his injuries, Raymond has become an avid collector of Star Wars merchandise. This is one of several family photos I took at Raymond's request.  DARIEN, WISCONSIN. USA. 2007.</p></div><p></p></div></h3>
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<h2>Marines respond to the explosion of an IED placed in the road in front of them.</h2>
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<h3><div class="KonaFilter image-container"><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>Peter van Agtmael / Red Hook Editions</span></p><p class="caption">An improvised bomb explodes on a road outside the village of Mian Poshteh. The Marines had just climbed down from an abandoned Observation Post once used by the Soviet Army. While surveying the area, the Marines noticed suspicious movement. A motorcycle drove by slowly, the driver watching them intently. A head bobbed up a few times from a ditch near the road. "Something's going down," said one Marine. A few people came out of their houses to watch the patrol. As the Marines moved down the road, the ground exploded and several soldiers disappeared into the cloud. The rest of the Marines ran towards the explosion while the men at the front emerged coughing and choking. No one had been killed or badly hurt. The Marines gathered themselves and crossed a dry irrigation canal to another road. The commander ordered five men from the town to come to the Marine position. The Afghans drifted down the road warily. The radio picked up chatter amongst the Taliban suggesting another bomb was hidden in the road. At gunpoint the commander questioned the men. To one old man he yelled "That bomb went off because you didn't stop them." The man responded pleadingly, "I don't know anything, so how could I stop it." The commander waved him off, "Alright, get away from here, alright." After questioning the elders, the Marines lined them up and told them to march in a line across the road back to the town. The Marines followed cautiously behind. As reporter Dexter Filkins and I began documenting the impromptu human shield, the Marine commander halted the patrol and decided to return to base.  MIAN POSHTEH, HELMAND. AFGHANISTAN. 2009.</p></div><p></p></div></h3>
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<h2>A soldier rides a donkey as resident warily watch on.</h2>
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<h3><div class="KonaFilter image-container"><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>Peter van Agtmael / Red Hook Editions</span></p><p class="caption">A soldier rides a donkey in Nineveh. The wary inhabitants of the isolated village had never seen an American patrol, and asked what country they were from. They served sugary tea to the soldiers but otherwise kept their distance. The troops took turns riding the donkey and posed for pictures holding lambs. In the Bible, Nineveh is described as a wicked city. God sent the prophet Jonah to preach there, and its inhabitants repented. God decided to spare the city.  NINEVEH. IRAQ. 2006.</p></div><p></p></div></h3>
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<h2>A sign advertising a 1970's themed disco night.</h2>
<h4><div class="KonaFilter image-container"><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>Peter van Agtmael / Red Hook Editions</span></p><p class="caption">A sign outside Arbor Ridge Catering and Banquet Hall advertising a 1970's style Disco Night. An ad for the event promised: Dress your retro best and boogie on down! Break out your bell-bottoms and polish your platforms!  There will be prizes for Best Dressed and Best Dancer.  HOPEWELL JUNCTION, NEW YORK. USA. 2010.</p></div><p></p></div></h4>
<h2>Bobby, a veteran who suffered extreme burns, relaxes in a pool.</h2>
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<h2><div class="KonaFilter image-container"><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>Peter van Agtmael / Red Hook Editions</span></p><p class="caption">Bobby was an atheist before his injuries, "I didn't believe in God. I didn't like the idea of fearing God. I didn't like the idea that anyone could be forgiven for their sins," but his newfound faith has sustained him in the aftermath of the IED blast. He is still wary of religion, believing "the core of all religions is all the same. It comes from that energy we all feel of a higher power. Each culture adds its own rules and what they think you're supposed to be, what makes you perfect for God, but I think that's stuff we don't need that man just put in there."  "What I want to do is to help more people than the guy that blew me up can hurt."  HOUSTON, TEXAS. USA. 2013.</p></div><p></p></div></h2>
<h3><a href="redhookeditions.com">Check out the book &gt;</a></h3>

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